Lawless: Rock Savage

Melodic Heavy Metal

4.5/5.0

Stepping out of the shadow of Demon, one of the seminal NWOBHM bands, to form a new band is Paul Hume (v,g) and Neil Ogden (d). They partner with Persian Risk guitarist Howie G and Headrush bassist Josh "Tabbie" Williams to create Lawless. Not to far removed from their roots, Lawless delivers essential and classic melodic heavy metal, perhaps more to the mid to late period Eighties style rather than late Seventies NWOBHM.

Lawless: and so happy, too.

While the tunes of Lawless certainly reflect heavy metal, they are also built around the strengths of melodic hard rock. There's lots of groove, melody, and simply catchy hooks in lyrics and music arrangements. With a songs like SOS, Scream, or Step In, ones of arena anthem quality, Lawless comes close to something like AOR metal, if that's to weird to consider.

Mostly, though, across this recording, Lawless is simple kicking out the melodic heavy metal jams, bolstered by the rock groove. Hume and Howie G offer an abundance of great riffs, and the latter burns up the fret board with terrific traditional metal solos. If this is not convincing enough, then pair this with appropriated odes to rock and metal in Heavy Metal Heaven, Rock an Roll City, and spunky Metal Time.

Perhaps the most interesting element here is Paul Hume's vocal performance. With only some brief research, I could not determine whether he has ever done lead vocals. Yet, he has a great, strong and melodic, delivery. He's a natural, and it sounds so effortless. The epic anthem Where Heroes Fall is probably the single best example of how good this fellow is.

Rarely do musicians band together and offer such an entertaining and promising first effort as Lawless's Rock Savage. This quartet is on to something very good. Easily recommended.

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